PhonePoint Pen could be the basis of future note-taking apps if this research project from Duke University students comes off.
PhonePoint Pen is an experimental new system for capturing gestures made with a mobile phone. While motion-sensing apps are nothing new, this is the first we have seen that actually lets you write letters in the air that your phone can read and understand.
The project is the work of students at North Carolina’s Duke University. “We’re trying to get past the whole idea of typing on a keyboard or using a stylus to enter information into devices,” said Duke’s Romit Roy Choudhury. The app should in theory work on any smartphone with a motion sensor built in.
At the moment, PhonePoint Pen requires you to make huge sweeping gestures to carefully form each letter, and anyone with sloppy ‘handwriting’ would likely just get a garbled message, but advances in AI and fuzzy pattern matching should make a greater variation possible and mean something lcloser to actual writing is possible. Don’t throw out your old keypad or touchscreen mobiles yet, but do watch this video for a little taste of what may be coming to your pocket in a few years time.
TBC | £tbc | PhonePoint Pen (via Engadget)
